Ms Cotter's Class

Recording and publishing a podcast is much easier than you’d think. I have compiled a simple guide here for the beginner.

Firstly, you’ll need an idea! A good place to start would be getting a TY class to record a few episodes as a project. Perhaps reading scary stories at Halloween would be an engaging listen. You could also have them interview teachers/students around their favourite books and films.

Aim to keep episodes short so there will be minimal editing!

From the list below, you can pick and choose which roles you’d like to assign. You can make this as polished and professional as you like and not all of these elements are essential.

Roles:

Name and Cover Art:

If you plan on hosting the podcast on a site, it will require cover art. I have linked to free customisable podcast cover art here:

https://www.canva.com/podcasts/templates/cover/

It will also need a name and this is a nice chance to test your students’ creativity. Keep it simple!

Equipment Management:

You will need access to a laptop and microphones. The simplest mics to use are USB mics as they plug in directly to the laptop. There are some excellent options available to suit all budgets and you don’t need to break the bank! If you have multiple hosts speaking to each other, audio software will be able to cater to more than one mic output at a time.

Here are some very good mics:

Mic 1

Mic 2

Mic 3

Recording and Editing (Production)

In my opinion, the best free recording software is Audcacity.

It can be downloaded directly to the laptop used to record and also can be used to edit the sound. Your students should familiarise themselves with how this works but it is very user-friendly and editing with it is generally very straightforward. The role of producer is very important!

Once the podcast is recorded, it needs to be exported to the laptop as an MP4 sound clip.

Hosting

Once more, there are many free options when it comes to hosting your podcast.

Buzzsprout is an excellent option. You simply upload the sound clip, you can add your podcast art and the site can also publish your podcast to Apple Podcasts and Spotify if you would like. If you would prefer not to publish to these platforms, Buzzsprout has their own playback feature which will suffice for listening to the podcast episode and can be sent to anyone.

Music

You could also ask students to compose a jingle for the podcast’s theme music. They could use something as simple as Garage Band on their phones! There are also sites where you can buy stock jingles for any type of podcast, such as Premium Beat

This is just some very general guidance which I hope helps! It is an incredibly rewarding and fun experience that really isn’t as daunting as one might expect. Best of luck!